


The Three Sisters

by Le_Thomas_Bouric



Category: For Honor (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 08:02:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25467451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Le_Thomas_Bouric/pseuds/Le_Thomas_Bouric
Summary: A story set in the ancient mythical history of the For Honour world, covering the legends of the origin of Knight, Viking and Samurai.
Kudos: 4





	The Three Sisters

Come, young Freyja, throw another log onto the hearth. These old bones grow cold, and it would be most impolite of me if I were to pass away before I could tell one last tale to these listening children.  
So, what song would you like me to sing this night? Perhaps a recounting of the Ragnarok, when the old world with its death throes hammered into shape the only world that we know? No, you have heard of that one too many times. The priests have worn it ragged with their prayers, and until the Norns graces me with their wisdom there is little that I can add to it. Maybe you would like to hear stories of the gods themselves? Mighty Odin, the great Thor, merciful Freyja that we all know and love? Or maybe the divine drakes of the East, that once stalked the lands of the Samurai before that people came to our shores? How about a poem dedicated to the Lady, much loved in the West by the Knights?  
No, no, you are right, Baldur. Gods and spirits are poor fare to stir the hearts of the young folk. We cannot emulate those that we worship, for they are a thousand reflections of what is in our hearts. My Thor is different to your Thor, Baldur. Thank you for correcting me. What we need is a tale of men and women. Of these I have plenty. Red Axe the Raider, despoiler of so many lands she could scarce get off her longboat before she would be beset by foes. Sir Gwenellyd, the last of an order that had sworn to find the Grail. Nobute Jingsura, who lead his people across the wide fickle ocean from their shattered isles to settle down in new lands.  
But you know all of these heroes, and know them so well that you could probably sing their lives with me. Their foes were other warriors, and while I could spin a pretty tale from their feats ultimately each single one will end the same.

Now, what if their enemies were less… mundane? We all know of the trolls, giants, unicorns, medusas, hobgoblins, vampires and were-beasts that were perpetually locked in a war with each other, only sparing each other of the bloodshed to attack human settlements. Those were dark days indeed, when a mother and father dreaded seeing the morning sun that might reveal an empty cot. Hunting parties could scarcely trek into the deep woods before all manner of creatures would erupt from the undergrowth to devour their flesh. How we had the energy and time to bicker amongst us I will never know.  
These beasts are long gone nowadays. Occasionally a warrior will come cantering into town with a troll head tied to their saddle, and they will boil the flesh, nail the skull to their gable and declare themselves monster-hunters. There is even a rumour these days of a knight who has tamed a unicorn to serve as his mount, but by the by the old monsters are long dead, though not for lack of trying on their part. Many costly battles did we humans have to suffer before we drove them back to the deep forests and mountains, and more battles were in our future before we ended their threat once and for all.  
But what times for heroes! For every vampire who demanded serfdom from the peasants of his land, there was a slayer to free them from his clutches. For every giant that wrought great destruction, there was a mighty warrior to stop it in its tracks. Their lives were short, but all the more glorious for it. The Valkyries were busy in those days, when life was stunted, brutish and loving to the warrior.  
Yes, I think I have such a tale. The Three Sisters ought to do nicely.

A hundred score summers from now, there was a family that lived right in the middle of a vast and ethereal forest, bordered by three small tribes. This family did not know of the war that these tribes fought, and cared even less, so long as they were left alone. The only contact that they had with the world outside of their forest was when they scavenged metals and food from the inevitable battlefields, after the spear-din was done. Nobody knows where they came from. Poets will love to tell you that they are the remnants of a tribe that we know as the Celts, while the priests will claim that they are children of the gods, which raises more questions of embarrassing nature. I am but a humble skald, so I will not tell you what I think they are, except to say that they were neither Viking, Knight nor Samurai.  
They were two, a husband and a wife, childless and unhappy for it. They would pray daily for some kind of miracle to befall them, but the gods were deaf or cruel, as is their want. Their wooden hut felt empty to them, and the forest was too silent, yet they would not leave. We all know that a visit to the wise-men and -women would have cured them of their ails, yet being tribeless they did not know that. Their laments would have torn your very heart out, though they must have had some luck, since no monster ever did take advantage of the moon-sky to devour them.  
Finally, one day, when the wife was out hunting, she made one last prayer to her gods. “I will dedicate whatever animal I kill today for you”, she said to them, “if you will grant me a baby on the morrow”. She looked at the sky and despaired, for the sun and the moon were akin to red eyes in the sky. Everyone knows that a red sun and moon are unlucky signs, and even tribeless as she was she took it as a bad omen. When I am finished with the story you shall be the judge of whether she was right or not.

The first beast she came upon was a Great Bear. Long dead now, these ferocious beasts were quick to anger and harder to kill, though if the legends are to be believed they would become staunch allies if befriended. She drew her spear and thrust it into its breast, piercing its heart and killing it in one blow, though not before its body bowled her over with its momentum.  
The next animal was a raven the size of an eagle. Taking advantage of her prostate position, it swooped down from its perch and attacked the wife, and would have carried away her eyes had she not torn apart its wings with her knife. It fell on the ground, cawing mournfully before its throat was sliced in twain.  
Finally, a wolf worthy to be a spawn of Fenrir. Soundlessly it pounced upon her back, tearing at her furs and cutting into the warm flesh under. I am not sure if even when I was in my prime I could have withstood the pain, for no wolf had larger claws, nor such hideous strength. Yet before it could flay open her back and crack her spine, the wife grabbed it by its snapping mouth and pulled it towards her chest, where she crushed it with one last embrace. Dropping to her knees, her last vision was that of the three animals that she had killed. Praying to her gods once more, begging them to grant her loved one a child, she fell over and died, right in the middle of the three bodies.  
Her husband, fearing for her safety, had left the hut as soon as he had heard the battle raging in the distance. He was too late to save his wife, a failure that he carried with him to the end of his life. In a rage, he would have butchered the carcasses of the three beasts, but grief stayed his hand long enough for him to bury her with the shattered remains of her spear. Lying upon her newly-dug grave, he cried himself to sleep.

He was woken the next day by a terrifying screeching, of the like he had never heard before. Thinking that it was a banshee of some kind, come to steal away the body of his wife for its meal, he sprung to his feet and prepared himself to defend her dignity. Banshees love the bodies of the dead, devouring them at such a speed that it has blinded some onlookers, and the husband knew he could not stand against the creature, and so readied himself for his death. Except that the screaming was coming from the bodies. Warily he approached them, and slit open their bellies to find three new-born babes. Although he had never seen such strange wee humans before, he was struck by a fatherly love for them, and so carried them home.  
Over the years his children grew tall and strong, fighting each other as eagerly as they fought together, though that is where the similarities ended. One was fierce, tall, growing a thick shaggy mane of brown hair, concealing within it a blunt, square face. She loved to pick fights, and attacked monsters with a rage that would have blanched most berserkers. Her favoured weapons were twin axes, weapons that even unsharpened could easily cut a log in half from the sheer weight behind them. Boisterous and life-loving, prone to enjoying the simple pleasures, she was called Bear by her father, for her brown eyes.  
Wolf, as the second sister was known, had grey hair that rarely grew below her shoulders, framing her yellow eyes, thin lips and slim head. Measured and disciplined, she wielded a scavenged bow with grace and precision, never letting herself put a finger out of place. She would work tirelessly at whatever task she was set to, never giving up, even when she was beyond hope. I have heard stories of Wolf patiently resting in shrub for days, waiting for the prey to fall perfectly into the path of her arrows. Never one for talking much, she kept her own counsel to herself, save from those whom she loves.  
The last one, Raven, was the smallest of the lot, though still tall to us. Mysterious and unearthly, her irises were as black as her hair, and she possessed a wisdom that was beyond the mortal ken. The gods alone know where she had learned that a unicorn could be tamed by a maid, or that the biggest hobgoblin is rarely more dangerous than the smartest, and they haven’t revealed that secret to me yet. Her attacks usually came from up upon high, a sword and a dagger poised to tear into the vulnerable parts. You could call her cold, if you didn’t know of the bond that she shared with her sisters.  
Even though they had barely reached their twentieth winter and the prime of their lives, these three sisters were capable fighters. Even the vast forest that encircled them could not hold them for long, and soon the three tribes were abuzz with the talk of the wild savages. Sometimes they would be seen stalking the battlefield, scavenging weapons and armour and, if the stories are true, stealing the wounded men from the Valkyries to wed them for a night. Knowing who they would love at the end of their life, I full-heartedly doubt that.

There was an empire called the Roman Imperium, that profited greatly from making slaves fight for their amusement. That empire would leave the three tribes alone, save when they preyed on us for slaves, reasoning that such harmless savages fighting constantly amongst themselves would produce the best gladiators for their arenas. In the end, they would pay for that mistake, but for the moment were in the ascendancy of their civilisation. The tribes were too busy bickering amongst themselves to unite against the threat to the north, and the Romans had used the slaves to build great fortresses to keep out the beasts that would have normally preyed upon them, and their army had subjugated all external threats to their power. When once they had been iron-hard warriors, they had become complacent and fat, content to enjoy whatever exotic pleasures could be brought to their table, and plot for their own personal advancement. They have a long military tradition, but those that still  
honour them are few and far between. The only remnant of their tumultuous history that survived was the practice of keeping slaves, and the tales that they heard of the three sisters from the Vikings, Knights and Samurais that they had kidnapped stoked their greed.

And so, a raiding party was organised to find and enslave the three women, for use in war or amusement none could say. Eventually they tracked down the home that they thought the three sisters lived in, only to find an old man weaving a cloth by the fire who welcomed them with wary courtesy.  
“Old man, have you seen the fabled women of the forest, they who stalk the blood-fields?”, they called.  
The old man mulled over his answer, for they spoke in a strange language that he had learned in bits and pieces, before finally replying.  
“I do know them, for they are my daughters, the last memory I have of my wife.”  
At this the slavers smiled to themselves, for in their minds they had already won. They had never met a father who was unwilling to sell their daughters, and even if he refused they just had to wait for the daughters to return. So, they accepted his offers of hospitality and entered his tent, where he served them boiled juice from crushed strawberries and haunches of deer. After a hearty meal, they broached the subject of him selling his daughters to him, a proposition that they had to repeat several times to him for he had trouble understanding the concept of slavery.

“Give us your three daughters and you can live like a king in these forests,” said one.  
“So long as they obey us we will treat them gently, for they are valuable to us. This ‘Bear’ will be an arena fighter, Wolf can be used to train our archers, and Raven can give us counsel on matters concerning the monsters,” said another.  
“You do not even have to be separated from them. Come with us and you can see them every day of the year,” said the one who considered himself humane.  
The old man did not answer for a long time. I think he was tempted by all this, for the tent leaked, food was scarce and warmth scarcer, but no matter how many times the vision of the manse that he could own entered his head the chains that his wife’s blood would have to bear would swiftly follow. Finally, he motioned them to follow him outside, and lead them to a clearing in the forest. There was an old grave in the middle of it, surrounded by three poles with animal skulls mounted on them. He turned to them and said his final words.

“My wife, who is buried here, died fighting these beasts to give these daughters to me. But it is not just her sacrifice that I honour. The beasts knew that they were going to die, for they must have been sent by the gods themselves to give their blood to my children. I know not what fate is in store for them, for those chosen by gods do not live full and happy lives, but I know that it is better than whatever you can give them. As for me, I do not need your houses, or your jewels, or your servants, or your food. I am rich enough without your civilisation.” And then he spat at their feet.

In a pique of fury for being so denied, they slaughtered him and left his body for the crows, then returned to the tent to wait for the sisters to fall into their trap. After staying for several hours, their patience was rewarded, as the sisters had finally returned with a deer each slung over their shoulders. Perturbed by these strange men, they hesitated before their home. This made the Romans impatient, and they tried to rush the sisters to capture them, their first mistake of that night. At first Bear tried to fight them, but they were too many, and she could not fend them all off. When she lunged forward, they parried with their shields, and for whatever reason Bear could not summon up the rage that she had once used to best her opponents. This will happen to you all in time. There will be battles where you will wade through the enemy and slay them by the dozens, battle-drunk, untouchable, a god of war. Then there will be other days, when their blades are that much quicker, or their defences that much sturdier, and you will be frustrated trying to best them. Right now Bear was having such a day, and so could not land a decisive blow, only stop herself from getting killed. You do not win battles  
by defending; you win them by attacking, killing your foe and running down the survivors when they break.  
Wolf also tried to fight, but met the same problems. Her enemies were too numerous, and they harried her, pushing her back and trying to box her in. Their shields were too broad, their armour too thick, and Wolf could not find a chink to exploit. The early arrows cannot pierce metal by themselves, so she was next to useless in this fight.  
Only Raven kept her wits about her. She studied the attackers, and realised that they were strangers to their forest. They trod the ground carefully, as if they were not used to it, and that spurned Raven to call her sisters to run into the forest to escape their aggressors.

The sisters ran, humiliated, splitting up to make sure that they could escape if one of them was caught. Bear relied on her bulk to force her way quickly through the undergrowth, Wolf slipped stealthily in between the bushes and trees, and Raven clambered up a tree and ran through the branches, as agile as a squirrel, flying in the air like her namesake. They all knew the forest like the back of their hand, while the slavers could barely walk for ten paces before tripping up on some unseen root. Had the sisters kept their wits they would have realised they only had to run a short way before they would have lost their pursuers, but in a panic they kept on running, but not utterly without direction. They were drawn by a thudding pull, a feeling that grabbed them by the heart and drew them to some unknown destination. They did not know it, but they were heading towards a destination that they had not been in since the beginning of their lives. For they entered the place of their birth, and the grave of their parents. Seeing the broken body of their father, grief tore into their hearts, and hatred welled up from those wounds. And for the first time in their lives, but certainly not the last, they felt the touch of magic.  
There are two type of magic. There is the magic that has faded from this world, the magic of spells and enchantment. Countless weapons and pieces armour bear it, granting supernatural abilities to their bearers. Then there is the magic of destiny.  
When events align, when they are charged with significance and history, this is the magic that can change the world. When a son uses the sword that killed his father, inevitably he will kill his father’s murderer with it, or it will betray him. The magic of destiny will always enforce itself upon reality, and it cannot be denied, not even by the gods. It is a fickle mistress; if you rely upon it, it will give you strength, until one day when it will be gone and leave you alone. Be wary when you are invoking it. It will be your doom, young ones.It has been there since the birth of the world, and will be there when it all comes crashing down. This is the deep magic.

That clearing was charged with that magic, for there were buried the five parents of the sisters. Two graves for the mother and father, and three poles for the skulls of the wolf, the bear, and the raven. When the sisters fight there, they fight with the power of fate behind them. All that they were, all that they are, all that they will be, all rolled up in one moment and unleashed upon their enemies.  
When Bear entered the clearing, she found new and old rage inside of her. Rage at the slavers, rage at the giant, rage at all the enemies that she would face, it burned her and made her stronger. I truly believe that she would have been able to kill her sisters then and there, though in time she would learn to control it and alloy it with cunning. Her strength became tenfold, and even with her bare hands could bend metal and shatter shield-walls.  
Wolf instead saw the all the actions that she had made and would make, all the ambushes and hunts, drawn bows and loosed arrows. I have said before that she knew exactly where her arrowhead would go; in that clearing I mean it literally. The merest crack in her opponents’ armour might as well have been five feet wide for all the good it did them.  
And Raven instead saw the wisdom of all her years. No secret was left untouched, no stone unturned, and her eyes saw everything she had forgotten, or had yet to know. She could even see into the future, a mixed blessing as it would turn out.  
At that moment as individuals they could have taken on an army. Together they were nigh unstoppable.

So when I think of the slavers, the killer of their father, stumbling into that graveyard bellowing their battle cry, I feel a little sorry for them.  
Bear bulled into them, swinging her axes in wide sweeps that sent up full plumes of blood. When they tried to encircle her, lock shields together and bring their short swords to bear she would slam into them, reopening the circle and began the slaughter anew.  
Her sister, Wolf, maintained distance and loosed her bolts at the weak points of the Roman armour. When they faced away from her they were already dead men; they just didn’t know it. She picked off the leaders and the bold, not killing as quickly as Bear but stealing the courage from their enemies.  
When the Romans tried to run, that was when Raven descended upon them. She sidled in among them, quiet and insidious as the mist, and tore out their eyes and throats with sword and dagger, all before they realised that she was there. They ran away from the forest, herded away from the forest by Raven, and back onto her sisters’ blades.  
The only survivor was a man called Sextus Aurellius, the only one with the prescience to bring his horse along. He ran only when he saw that there was no hope, and to his regret couldn’t save his comrades. He fled to a nearby fort, for the Romans loved to build their forts everywhere, and was received by their commander. The Princip declined to lead his legion into the forest, believing that what the slaver claimed was three women was in fact a tribe of barbarians waiting to ambush whatever Legionaries that he sent in. The sisters followed Sextus’ footsteps, and seeing the fort stopped, for they had never seen such a construction. They knew that their newfound strength could not destroy those enemies by itself, so they had to think of a plan.

Bear put forward the idea of a frontal assault, a lightning strike to catch the Romans unaware and kill them while they were still confused and surprised. Wolf disagreed, saying instead that they should wait out the Romans, ambushing and killing the supply caravans and bleeding them until they could be destroyed in one final attack. So Wolf and Bear argued amongst themselves over who was right, while Raven was silent, musing over All-Father knows what.  
Her sudden foresight had changed her fundamentally, for after that night she rarely smiled or laughed. The gift of seeing into the future, while certainly giving her knowledge unrivalled in the mortal world, left her with a troubling sense of foreboding, a feeling of impending doom, as if everything would come to nought. In the end, she shook  
it off, and told her sisters exactly what they would do to win. Had she known the dark path that she would lead them all down, perhaps she would have cautioned them to go home and build anew, but she did not, and so trod that path they would.

The Princip, secure in the knowledge that whatever had attacked the slavers was staying in the forest, made a tour of the sentries posted during the night. The first man he came across did not reply to his hails, and so the Princeps approached him to berate the Legionnaire, but no sooner then he laid his hand on the soldier did the latter fall to the ground, dead, with a gash circling his throat.  
The Princip reacted like a good soldier and used the dead man’s horn to rouse the sleeping Legionaries. But only three quarters of the Legion assembled in the courtyard. Upon closer inspection, the remainder were found dead in their beds, or hanging from the nearby trees. These were men that they had eaten with, gambled with, fought alongside with. They were brothers and sisters, closer than friends, comrades. Enraged, they charged into the forest, confident in their superiority and lusting after revenge, but only after the Princeps sent Sextus onwards to Roma to spread news of this new threat.  
I think we all know the fate of the Romans. An attack, in the night, in a forest that could contain an unknown number of vicious fighters that had already killed a quarter of their comrades? They should have known better, but in their place I do not think that I would have done differently. The bonds we share with our battle-brothers and -sisters are unshakeable. I should know…

The Legion began to fragment in the dark when they began to hear strange noises, the half-heard voices of comrades. They drifted apart into small groups, and perished out of sight, but not silently. To them it must have seemed like vile spirits had been set upon them by the gods of the underworld, but they bravely pushed on, and they died bravely. In the end, none survived. A whispered shout from the trees, and another splinter would charge in that direction, only to be cut down by the sisters when they were far enough from the main group. The Princip soon realised the folly that his men were committing and rallied them to him, only to find that a mere handful of Legionaries had survived. He knew that whatever enemy he was facing severely outnumbered outclassed him, and that he could not get out of the woods in time, so he prepared his final stand.  
They dropped upon the Romans’ heads from the branches, long steel blades reaching out to reap a fresh crop of flesh and blood. The sisters cut their way through the weakened and dispirited Romans in one grand assault, for their foes were stripped of their advantage of numbers by the relentless attacks in the night. The Princip was the last to fall, a blade in his hand and defiance in his heart. The gods are kind, for he had died bravely, and so he went to Valhalla, there to fight and feast and wait for the final war, Ragnarok. But I am diverging from my tale. There is plenty of time for that story, later.

Sextus the Unlucky, as he was now known, arrived in Roma and with the emperor’s blessing lead back a detachment of Praetorians to the fort. They found nothing, except scorched grass and bodies, swinging in the wind. Of the mysterious attackers, there was no sign. The sisters had already gone, and would only reappear in their full glory years later. 

And so, we come to the end of this particular tale, but I have plenty of other stories; the hobgoblin Khan, the Horror of Vardennes, the Host of Gheists, the King Giant, and the Fall of an Empire. The sisters would go to the frozen north and the sand-drenched east, to the water-locked isles in the west and the jungles of the south in their quest for vengeance, they would even mould our ancestors into the kingdoms that we now fight for. But these stories must wait upon the breaking of the new dawn, for the night watcher is high in the star-hall.

Freyja, could you escort these eager younglings back to their parents? This skald needs time to rest, and dwell upon the olden times, when danger lurked around every corner, hand-in-hand with glory. I fear that if I were to pass away without finishing the tale of the Three Sisters my spirit will haunt these young warriors until they apologise for keeping me awake, and none of us want that at all. Now leave an old woman to her sleep…


End file.
